She notices him for the first time at a screening of East of Eden.
She can tell instantly that he’s an American from a thousand different
things—his coat, his shoes, even the way he walks, slightly
self-conscious, hands jammed in his pockets and staring at his feet. He
has no friends, or at least no friends who see movies with him, which is
essentially no friends at all. The others at the theater stare at him,
talking to each other openly about this American boy who comes to every
movie but never approaches anyone, not even to bum a cigarette or ask the
location of a good restaurant. When people come up to him, asking for a
light, he speaks French well enough but he never has a light, until after
a few weeks he begins carrying matches.
He never seems to notice anyone except when they’re right in front of him,
but for some reason he notices Isabelle and Theo. During Shanghai
Express, she distinctly feels his eyes on the backs of their necks, but
after the movie, he scurries away as always. She points him out to Theo,
who runs his eyes up and down the boy’s retreating body like a pair of
hands.
“Little lost lamb in Paris,” he says dismissively, but he doesn’t look
away until the boy is completely out of sight.
The next night, he’s still staring at them. She lights a cigarette with
matches from Theo’s coat pocket, using the opportunity to lean in and
whisper in his ear, “That boy is staring at us again.”
“Staring at you,” he whispers back, as though there were any
difference. “He looks as if he doesn’t know whether he wants to fuck you
or worship at your feet.”
Isabelle doesn’t think so, on either count. She’s lived her entire life
feeling as though she and Theo are connected not just by blood and soul,
but by skin. They are Siamese twins--Isabelle’s body is Theo’s, and Theo’s
hers.
This boy, though, looks at them as though he has seen a space between
them, a space that he desperately wants to fill with his own warm skin, so
that through him they can finally, really be connected to each other.
2. Under, On, Between
The photo means nothing to him now, really. It was taken when they were
fifteen, when Isabelle’s body was still a compelling mystery, only
revealed by occasional trips to swimming pools and the accidental opening
of doors. They had explored each other’s bodies during the early years of
puberty—Theo revealing the few, sparse hairs on his chest and genitals to
Isabelle; Isabelle lifting her shirt to let Theo poke at the growing lumps
there—but by fourteen they had temporarily denied themselves of each
other, a failed experiment. It took barely a year for them to realize that
Isabelle’s body was Theo’s, and his body hers. It was stupid for them to
hide what was their own from themselves.
So before Matthew, the photo was just an heirloom of that time, something
he could look at to remind himself of that terrible time without Isabelle.
Now it is a catalyst, much like Theo is. A catalyst for the explosion
between Matthew and Isabelle that had been endlessly building, until Theo
finally tired of the game a lit a match.
Now it’s done, and the picture means nothing to Matthew. He has the real
thing now, Isabelle’s warm soft skin in his very hands, and so the photo
is lost during their move from table to floor. At the time, Theo thinks as
little of it as Matthew does. He forgets about it, and busies himself
making breakfast for the three of them. Fucking always wears him out, and
he knows it will be the same for Isabelle. He occupies his mind with the
eggs, and ignores the sounds that Isabelle and Matthew make together,
Isabelle’s moans of pain and pleasure, Matthew’s surprised and ecstatic
exhalations.
Later, though, he finds it beneath the table when he reaches for a dropped
cigarette. The picture is obscured beneath a film of blood and fluids, and
so he knows it was under, on, between Matthew and Isabelle’s bodies as
they fucked. On the back, too, there is the dried remnant of the pre-cum
and sweat which had adhered it to Matthew’s flesh. He licks this side of
the photo, but tastes almost nothing, just paper and the barest hint of
salt.
3. Two Mirrors
Matthew knows it’s over the moment Theo pulls away from him. It isn’t just
the rejection, though that registers painfully in the pit of his stomach,
it’s the violence of that movement, the way Theo digs his nails into
Matthews’s hands and jerks away from him. For a moment, Matthew can see
everything in Theo’s eyes—the lust, the frustration, the same love that
Matthew feels—but then there is nothing in Theo’s eyes, nothing but the
reflection of the fires already burning in the street. He is gone, and
Isabelle follows him, because not matter how much they say they are
one another, they aren’t. Instead, they’re like two mirrors facing one
another, reflecting each other till there is just one mirror that looks
like thousands.
It’s difficult to find his way back to the apartment, but somehow he does,
forcing his way through crowds of people. Students or police, their eyes
reflect the same fires, their voices hold the same threats, their hands
deliver the same violence. He can’t tell if its smoke or tears burning his
eyes, so he just wipes his cheeks and keeps his head down.
The back door is still open. When he goes in, he’s surprised at the
mess—dirty dishes, the carton of rotting vegetables Theo had brought in,
ashes and cigarette butts overflowing bowls. Somehow he’d never noticed it
before, but then he’d spent most of his time in Theo’s room, where the
mess was to some extent on purpose. Its funny what you don't see when
you're in love.
He does notice, however, that there’s a hose hooked up to the gas line,
but he doesn’t register its meaning, whatever its meaning is. During the
walk home, seeing all those angry faces like toy soldiers coming off an assembly
line, all the fear and pain and rage had been slowly replaced by numbness.
The shouts from outside, the acrid smell of gas, the sight of Isabelle and
Theo running hand in hand towards the flames, they all mean nothing to him
right now. They are merely a series of images and sensations with no
significance attached to them, no emotion.
He knows how much it will hurt later, so for now, he clings to his
numbness.
In the living room, he looks blankly at the broken glass and melted
candles for a moment, and then crawls back into the little fort Isabelle
had created. Matthew knows why they love it. It’s like a womb, warm and
close, the walls glowing like when you hold your hand up to the light,
that luminescent quality of skin. They’d invited him in here, with them,
as though he too had been born attached to them.
He finds the check beneath a pile of blankets. At first he thinks it’s an
old check, lost and forgotten on the living room floor, and now found
again by him. When he looks at the date, though, he sees that it was
written earlier today, and he remembers the acrid smell, the hose hooked
up to the gas line, the look on Isabelle’s face when they’d woken up, a
mixture of panic and relief. In the back of his mind, he thinks he's
grateful to have been included in Isabelle's attempt.
He lies back onto the pillows with the check still in his hand. Through
the stench of gas and smoke, he can still smell them on the pillows, that
scent which is neither Isabelle nor Theo, but the two of them combined.
Maybe they were right. Maybe they were the same soul in different bodies,
and to separate them would mean death. But at this very moment, they’re
together, and Matthew knows that is death, too. He has a picture in his
mind of Isabelle and Theo covered in blood, and that blood drying on their
dead skin until they are finally, once again, stuck together.
He wonders if it would be better for them to have never woken up at all.
If it would be better for them to have just stayed here in this room, in
this nest that they created for themselves, all of them wrapped around
each other and dreaming the same endless and beautiful dream.
